Even though the Supreme Court's immunity ruling means Donald Trump's
2020 election case will not come to trial anytime soon,
special counsel Jack Smith may still have a chance to
present some of his evidence.
But the former president is reportedly trying to prevent even
that from happening.
For more, I want to bring in Hugo Lowell,
political investigations reporter for The Guardian,
and Andrew Weissman, former FBI general counsel and former senior
member of the Muller probe.
Lucky us. He's also an MSNBC legal analyst and a
law professor at NYU.
Hugo, you must go first.
Why? Because you broke this story.
What do we need to know?
Look, Trump World knows that the potential evidence that could
come out of hearings in the summer
could be really damaging, especially before the election.
And the one thing that the Trump campaign has polled
is the January 6th case polls badly.
They see that that was their most damaging case politically.
And so in many ways,
they're determined to avoid that evidence from becoming public.
And So what the Trump lawyers seem to have
settled on in terms of their strategy to avoid it
is too far.
As we reported, one is to basically argue to Judge
Chuckin,
the presiding child judge in the in the DC case,
that she doesn't have to hold hearings at all and
that this could be
resolved on legal argument and through briefings.
And then if that fails and the special counsel pushes
for witnesses,
people like Mike Pence, Trump strategy is then to basically
litigate his way through and delay it until off the
election.
And that would look like executive privilege fights.
It will look like trying to get Pence to assert
speech or debate clause protection.
And then getting other people who are connected to this
case,
people like John Eastman and people like Mike Roman who
have been charged in Fulton County to say that their
5th Amendment concerns.
And couldn't possibly testify as to whether,
you know, Trump was acting as candidate Trump in a
particular instance leading up to January 6 or if he
was acting as President Trump.
And of course, the aim is to prevent prosecutors from
being able to make that argument because it's up to
prosecutors to show Judge Chuckin that that the presumptive immunity
for any official acts can be overcome.
But Andrew, how's he going to do that?
How's he going to honestly challenge testimony from key witnesses
like his former VP?
What's the legal argument for that?
Well, I think what he's going to try to do
is basically not have the hearing.
I mean he's the worst possible thing for him is
essentially a mini trial.
As Hugo said. The problem,
Stephanie, is that the Supreme Court decision,
as horrendous and untethered and unprincipled as it is,
does say that Judge Chuck in should hold a factual
hearing and says the inquiry is fact specific and gives
lots of examples of what needs to be determined factually.
Well, a factual hearing cannot be decided on the papers.
It's something where the government is going to say it
is entitled to present witnesses to show why the
why this is appropriate to consider
for trial and it satisfies the various tests that Supreme
Court has laid out.
And then I also think the issue of executive privilege,
which is sort of a fall back argument.
I mean, I don't fault Donald Trump's counsel for making
the argument,
but that's already been litigated with respect to numerous people.
Mike Pence, for instance, as the reporting is,
has already testified in the grand jury.
So the issue of executive privilege is come and gone.
So this is going to be,
I think, a bit of an uphill battle
for Donald Trump. But it's also,
you know, really notable that he obviously does not want
the facts to come out.
I mean, if you thought the facts were going to
be good for you,
you wouldn't be objecting so strenuously to having this kind
of pretrial hearing.
But we can't be surprised,
right? Any hearing is not going to be good for
Donald Trump.
And successfully and blocking or delaying has been a huge
success for him thus far,
Andrew. So wouldn't it make perfect sense that he would
go this way?
Absolutely. I mean, this is delay,
delay, delay is absolutely the thing to do.
But this is one where the language of the Supreme
Court case is very much against Donald Trump's position
in terms of having a factual hearing.
And again, I do think that this,
you know, plays, I think into
Joe Biden's hands to say,
what are you hiding? In other words,
why do you not want to have a hearing where
people who are just remember,
these witnesses are going to be Republican witnesses who are
all part of his administration or whether it's all the
way up to Mike Pence or whether it's counsel in
the White House who worked for Donald Trump.
That's the kind of information that can now be presented.
And so, again, I'm not surprised that he's making these
arguments,
but I do think it's an uphill battle.
Republican witnesses almost reminiscent of the January 6th hearings.
Hugo, do you expect to see Trump use this new
strategy in the documents case in Georgia?
Yeah, I think, I think for sure in the documents
case,
difficult to say about Georgia,
but in the documents case,
you know, they are already filing briefs saying that Judge
Chuck and should accept supplemental authority on several points in
in light of the Supreme Court decision.
Notably, the one thing they're really looking at is Clarence
Thomas's line about whether Jack Smith was even lawfully appointed
because the special counsel
was, was, in Trump's eyes,
not lawfully appointed by statute.
And we went through this argument
at a hearing in Fort Pierce earlier,
well, several weeks ago. And Judge Chuck and at that
Judge Cannon at that point,
excuse me, tried to suggest that actually
Trump's argument was a loser,
but because of the Supreme Court decision and because of
chance Thomas Line that he is not sure that Jack
Smith was properly appointed.
Trump's lawyers have already seized on this.
We've already got some of the deadlines frozen in the
documents case that she now considers the implications of the
SCOTUS decision.
Andrew, I'm not letting you leave until we at least
touch this other topic.
Democrats are now trying to focus voters attention on Project
2025. We've been talking about it for months.
This thing could mean radical changes for the Justice Department
and give the president more control than ever.
What should we know?
You know, I think one of the things to know
is that there is a norm in the Justice Department
that it does not take direct orders as to who
to prosecute and who not to prosecute from the president
of the United States.
Meaning that in a democratic system,
it's really important that you don't have a president saying
things like just go after Democrats or just go after
Republicans.
And you see Merrick Garland actually going after Republicans and
Democrats.
There's a sitting US senator who is on trial right
now here in Manhattan.
And it really is sort of the road to autocracy
if you have a Justice Department that is just a
handmaiden to politics.
And part of the Donald Trump playbook is to do
just that.
He and this is one where you don't have to
be worried and be sort of predictive.
It's something that he did under Attorney General Bill Barr.
And I think it's only going to be worse under
Project
2025. And it's really something that is anathema to anyone
who believes in the rule of law.